


Snapshots

by Rubywolf



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/F, depending on how you define fluff, little yaz, maybe a little fluff, maybe a little trigger warning for bullying, what happened with Izzy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 14:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18671806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubywolf/pseuds/Rubywolf
Summary: A series of snapshots throughout Yaz's life, dealing with bullying and standing up for yourself.





	Snapshots

Yasmin Khan was seven years old, and she was in time-out. Again.

It really wasn’t her _fault_ , though, she’d been playing on the playground with her friend Ryan, and she’d climbed the jungle gym, and he’d tried to climb up after her but fell down and that absolute _meanie_ MacKenzie had laughed at him and called him stupid. So Yaz had pushed her off her swing.

She sat in the time out chair, thin brown arms crossed ferociously across her chest, glaring out at the classroom in front of her. Every now and again Ryan would glance over at her with big, brown, worried eyes, and Yaz stuck her chin out further. 

Miss Jones came over to kneel down in front of the time-out chair. “Okay, Yasmin. Are you ready to come out of time-out now?”

“No.” Yaz frowned defiantly.

“No?” Miss Jones raised her eyebrows in surprise. “And why not?”

“Because it’s not _fair_. MacKenzie should have been in time-out, too, she was the one who was making fun of Ryan.”

“That still doesn’t give you any reason to push her down.”

“Well, Ryan’s nan won’t let him get in trouble, and someone had to do it.”

Miss Jones looked away for a second, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Yasmin, you still can’t go around pushing people down. It’s not your job to go around settling disputes, you need to use words, nicely, or come and get a grownup. Can you promise me you’ll come and get me next time, instead of taking things into your own hands?”

Yasmin sighed a massive sigh, but conceded. “I guess.”

“Ok, good girl. You can leave the time-out chair now.” Miss Jones stood up and went back to her desk, and Yaz slid off the time-out chair and joined her friends at the table, who were carefully cutting shapes out of construction paper.

“I told you you were gonna get in trouble,” Ryan told her guiltily, when she slid into the chair next to his.

Yasmin shrugged. “Bet MacKenzie doesn’t do it again though.” She glanced up at her friend with a grin and grabbed a stencil.

 

* * *

Yasmin Khan was twelve years old, and she was starting to think she should have worn something else to her first day at Silverdale.

But it was a very pretty sari, and her Nani had made it just for her. Her friends at the mosque had loved it, her sister was so jealous of it, and even though her mum had suggested she wear something else to school today, Yaz had insisted. But noticing the weird looks she was getting, and suddenly feeling very conscious of the fact that it was nothing like what the other girls were wearing, she thought maybe she should have listened to her mum. She was never going to make friends if everyone thought she was weird. It was one thing to leave primary school and have to forge a whole new set of friends; it was a completely other thing to have to do it all again the following year. As if making friends wasn’t hard enough.

“So what’s the deal with the toga?” a boy whose name she didn’t know slung his bookbag over a chair near the back of the classroom and gave Yaz a strange look.

“It’s not a toga,” Yaz retorted. “It’s a sari. My nani made it.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“I don’t get it.”

Yaz frowned. “What’s to get?”

A tall, thin girl stepped in between them authoritatively and gave the boy a condescending look. “Back off, Jacob, I think her dress is well cool.” She flung her waist-length blonde hair over her shoulder and turned to Yaz. “Don’t listen to him, he’s an idiot. You can come and sit by me.” She chose a desk at the front of the room and motioned Yaz to the desk next to hers. Jacob hung his head in shame.

Yaz watched the interaction in confusion, but was perfectly happy to take any positive interaction she could. She took the seat next to the girl. “Thanks.”

The girl flipped her hair over her shoulder again and smiled widely. “Sure. You’re new here this year, aren’t you? I don’t remember you last year.”

Yaz nodded. “We just moved to Park Hill. It’s my first day here.”

The girl smiled. “Well, you can be my best friend. I’m Izzy.”

Yaz smiled, too. “I’m Yasmin. Or Yaz, if you want.”

“Awesome. Oh, let me introduce you to some people!” Izzy turned in her chair, looked around, and beckoned a group of girls over. “Come here, you guys.”

The group obeyed almost immediately, giving Yaz the impression they’d been waiting for Izzy to say something, following her lead. Yaz found herself surrounded by girls who looked at her and Izzy like they were the coolest people ever.

“Yaz, this is Peyton, Danielle, Abby, Jessica, and Lily. Gang, this is Yaz, and she’s awesome. Isn’t her dress the coolest?”

“So awesome!”

“I love it!”

“It makes you look like a princess!” The girls all fawned their agreement with Izzy, and Yaz found herself a bit confused by the sudden change in attitude towards her. She smiled and chatted with the girls until class began.

The next day, Yaz wore jeans and a jumper to school, and Izzy showed up in a colorful ankle length skirt. “It’s just like yours!” she proclaimed to Yaz.

In truth, it looked nothing like a sari, Yaz thought, but she appreciated the solidarity of the most popular girl in the year. In the coming weeks, Izzy proved that she wasn’t kidding when she’d told Yaz they were going to be best friends. They hung out in class, they hung out after class, Izzy even invited her to join the girls football team. They were inseparable.

As the year went on, Yaz noticed that a trend had been set. Every girl in their year wore colorful ankle length skirts to school.

 

* * *

Yasmin Khan was fifteen, and she didn’t know it, but she was about to have the worst day of her life.

It started out easily enough, with Yaz lacing up her shoes in preparation for the day’s football practice. “Come on, Yaz,” Danielle was goading her. “It only works if it’s a double date! Just pick someone, half the guys in the year are dying to go out with you. I know Jared’s free this weekend.”

Yaz scrunched up her nose. “Jared? Seriously? That’s who you want me to go with?”

“Why, what’s wrong with Jared?” Danielle frowned down at her.

“Ooh, he was talking about you, too,” Abby chipped in. “You should totally go, Yaz.”

Yaz turned her attention back to her shoelaces, tugging them tighter. “But… it’s _Jared_. He’s like three inches shorter than me, and you can smell his breath from across the room.”

“Well you don’t have to kiss him!”

“Oh, like he’s going to go on a date and not try to kiss me at some point!” Yaz protested. If there was one thing she didn’t want, it was to have her first real kiss be with _Jared_. “I dunno. If I go- and that’s a BIG if, I’m not promising anything,” she said, pointing her finger at Danielle, “I’ll pick someone myself, okay?”

“Okaaay,” Danielle said, singsonging the word. “But don’t be surprised if he asks you first!”

Yaz groaned inwardly at the thought of having to either turn him down or have to go on a date with him, and fortunately Izzy chose that moment to saunter through the room, effectively ending that conversation. 

“Come on, guys, leave her alone. She’ll pick someone when she wants to,” Izzy shooed the other girls away from Yaz. “It’s time for practice!”

The conversation continued to bounce through Yaz’s head as they did their drills. It was true, she didn’t want to date just anybody. But there were so few guys at their school that she was even interested in, nobody at the mosque she could name-drop and get everyone off her back. It was such a burden, having high standards, she thought to herself as she kicked the ball squarely at Abby when her turn came. Maybe she should just pick a dude and get it over with, get everyone off her back. 

Yaz realized she was having trouble with a specific shot, so she took a few minutes to go over it with Coach Stewart after practice was formally over. By the time she reached the locker rooms, most of the girls had already showered and headed out to class, save herself, Izzy, and Danielle. 

She listened to Izzy and Danielle chatter about the chemistry homework they’d been assigned, chiming in herself from the shower when she realized she knew an answer neither of them had been able to figure out. She toweled off and stepped out in her bra and panties, pulling on her clothes and explaining the results of the chemical reaction while she squeezed the water from her hair, Danielle furiously scribbling notes in a notebook before taking off for class.

“It’s a good thing you got that, because I was never going to figure that out,” Izzy told her, finishing an intricate French braid on her own damp hair in the mirror. 

“I had to go over the chapter like five times before I did, though, and I’m still not sure it wasn’t a trick question,” Yaz laughed, letting her hair down from the towel. “Ugh. Frizz everywhere. Why can’t my hair just behave?” She turned and realized Izzy was watching her.

“I can do you if you want,” Izzy told her, motioning to her hair.

“Yeah, thanks.” Yaz turned and waited while Izzy expertly wrangled her hair into a neat braid in record time.

“Let’s see the front?” Izzy murmured as she wrapped a hair tie around the end, and Yaz turned around. Izzy smiled and tucked a stray piece of hair behind Yaz’s ear. “That’s better.”

Yaz was just realizing that something was ever so slightly off about this interaction when out of nowhere, Izzy’s lips were on hers, and Yaz would have pulled away, except her mind had completely lost the ability to function at all and she could no more back away than she could return the kiss, even if she’d wanted to. 

Izzy lurched backwards, her entire face suddenly blazing red. “Um. Yeah.” She scooped her bag off the floor and fled the locker room without so much as another look at her friend, leaving Yaz frozen to the spot in utter confusion.

What… had just happened here?

Had she just… had her first kiss… with _Izzy_??

A knot was forming in the pit of her stomach, the sort of knot that forms when you realize you’ve just really screwed something up. Not just an “oh no I left my homework at home” kind of bad, but “the principal just called me into his office to say there’s been an accident” kind of bad. Shakily, Yaz splashed some water on her face, unable to even look her own reflection in the eye, and uneasily made her way to her class.

Yaz didn’t hear a word the teacher was saying. She didn’t have a class with Izzy until the afternoon, which meant she had until lunchtime to decide how to handle this. Yaz doodled anxious squares in the corner of her notebook, trying to convince herself that none of this was her fault. Izzy had kissed _her_ , after all, she should be the one freaking out right now, not Yaz. But Yaz couldn’t help the adrenaline shooting through her system, chewing on her lip and ever so slightly bouncing a leg under her desk. God, she felt like she was being chased by a bear, she had no idea what she was going to do.

Lunchtime came, and she could feel the post-exercise fatigue demanding she eat something, but she could barely stomach the thought of eating before dealing with the Izzy situation. Maybe she should just pull her aside and ask her, privately, just what the hell, if she could find her.

Not seeing Izzy at the usual table, Yaz finally slid her lunch tray onto the table next to Abby, who gave her a disgusted look and scooted away. Yaz frowned, confused. “What?” she asked, noticing Danielle, Peyton, Kayla, Jared, and Jacob all looking up at her with the same judgmental expression.

“Izzy told us what happened,” Abby told her coldly.

Yaz felt like all the blood had suddenly drained from her body and been replaced with ice. “What?”

“That you asked her to do your hair and then kissed her?” Danielle crossed her arms, eyebrows raised.

“No,” Yaz squeaked. “That’s… that’s not how it happened at all!”

Yaz realized a split second too late that she had said exactly the wrong thing, based on Jared’s sudden whoop of “that’s hot!” and the disgusted exclamations of the girls. Her stomach turned over. “No, I mean-“

“Look.” Abby turned to face Yaz, looking up at her from her seat. “We’re not interested in hanging out with a _lesbian_. And we definitely don’t want you in our locker room, you might try to like, rape us or something. Coach Stewart definitely won’t let you stay on the team if you’re going to make everyone uncomfortable.”

Yaz turned away with tears stinging her eyes, suddenly noticing that half the dining hall was looking at her with mixed looks of disgusted curiosity or judgement. And two tables away sat Izzy, not at all in her usual spot, surrounded by a group of their friends sitting in strategic places so as to leave no room anywhere near Izzy, people that had so obviously made this change today to keep Yaz from sitting near her. “Yeah, it was so gross,” she could hear the familiar pitch of her best friend’s voice through the din of the dining hall. “I don’t know why she thought she could just come on to me. But it totally explains why she never wants to go out with the guys here.” Her eyes caught Yaz’s, briefly, and Yaz caught no trace of her friend in them, no remorse for the lie, just a cold and bitter disgust.

Yaz fled from the dining hall, pausing to stop in the bathroom for a minute, unsure if she was going to throw up or not. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and yanked the braid out of her hair, not caring how it looked, just wanting any of _her_ handiwork to be off her body. She wasn’t going to go to afternoon classes if _she_ was going to be there, she decided, shaking with the effort of holding back her tears. And she wasn’t going to cry in a school bathroom like this, not when other girls could come in… Abby’s words about the locker room rushed back to her, and she fled the bathroom, too, all the way to the principal’s office. Not trusting herself to speak, she motioned to the phone on the admin’s desk, suddenly letting herself have another pang of anger at her parents for not letting her have her own mobile phone, and she picked it up and dialed.

“Mum?” she asked, hating the cracks in her voice. “I need you to come get me from school.”

 

* * *

Yasmin Khan was eighteen years old, and she sat in her squad car, pleased as punch, familiarizing herself with the various lights and siren controls. Her very own squad car. Granted, she was still being assigned to piddly little cases that she felt didn’t even scratch the surface of what she was capable of, but the squad car was the first step towards what was next. First it would be parking tickets and traffic patrol, and then they would start assigning her real jobs.

A dark shape outside her window surfaced in her peripheral vision and knocked on the glass, making her startle. It was her coworker, Eddie, and he was laughing. “Gotcha. You ready?” 

“You have got to stop doing that,” Yaz rolled her eyes.

“Never!” Eddie grinned and slid into the passenger seat. “Ready to go watch some drunks make fools of themselves?”

Yaz laughed. “It’s just a concert. They can’t get that drunk.”

“Oh, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen this.” Eddie adjusted his vest as she drove off. “People will surprise you. Besides, concerts are always a lot of fun to work. You’ve got your star struck fans, your casual fans, and your people who are only there to drink while their friends have fun. You’ll enjoy it.”

Yaz laughed again. “You just love the chaos, don’t you?”

“That’s half the fun of being a cop. Heading into chaos and making them sort it out.” He grinned. “Don’t tell me that’s not why you’re here.”

Yaz made a mock offended face. “Of course not.”

Eddie laughed. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll see.”

They reached the venue and took their place, using the squad car as a barrier and directing traffic. As it turned out, Eddie had been right. Working concerts was fun, and people were significantly drunker than Yaz had imagined. She helped a young girl who had lost her phone find her group of friends, she called a taxi for the drunkest guy she’d ever seen when he admitted he couldn’t drive home, and, just as Eddie had promised- drama.

Yaz noticed the young couple leaving the venue, and even though they were too far away to hear the conversation, Yaz could tell the girl was feeling intimidated. The guy she was with was gesturing wildly, making her step further away, and he was continuing to step forward into her space with every step she took away. Yaz casually walked closer, picking up some trash as an excuse to get closer without making it obvious she was considering interfering.

“Look, I’ve got a boyfriend. I didn’t come here to meet people.”

“Well obviously you don’t, or he’d be here with you. Come on, just give me your phone, and I’ll put my number in it.”

“I really don’t think-“

“You’re a terrible liar, you know that? Now give me your phone.” 

Yaz stepped close enough that she was nearly between them, close enough to smell the beer on the guy’s breath. “Trouble, you two?” she asked, looking at him pointedly.

“Nah, my girlfriend here just-“

“I’m not his girlfriend!” she interrupted, offended. “I literally met him tonight.”

“She’s just being difficult,” he told Yaz, in a tone that sounded like he expected Yaz to sympathize with him.

“Sounds to me like she wants to be left alone,” Yaz told him.

“Look, who are you to just barge in and tell me what to do? This is a private conversation.” He towered over Yaz, trying to look intimidating.

Yaz pulled out her badge with raised eyebrows, as if her uniform didn’t make it clear enough. “Do you want to try again?” she asked.

The guy faltered for a minute. “I, um…”

“How about you stay over here, with me, so she can go home in peace?” Yaz glanced at the girl, who gave a wave of thanks and took off as fast as she could walk.

The guy mumbled under his breath, embarrassed, and Yaz waved him off when the girl had been out of sight for several minutes. Eddie was laughing when Yaz rejoined him at the squad car. “What’s so funny?” she asked, confused.

“Told you the drunks were fun.”

“Not so fun for her,” Yaz countered.

“True. You handled it well though,” Eddie told her. “You picked the right profession.”

Yaz laughed. “Well I certainly hope so!”

The rest of the evening passed, uneventfully, until finally Yaz was driving them back to the police station, stopping on the way to grab coffees to hopefully keep them awake until the end of their shift.

Eddie yawned, stretching his arms behind the back of the seats obnoxiously. “Man am I glad to have a couple days off coming up.”

“Oh? Big plans?” Yaz asked.

“Nah. I’ll probably take Amanda out for a date, but that’s about it. We’re old and boring.” He laughed. “How about you? Hot date this weekend?”

Yaz rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee while she drove. “Nope. No plans.”

“You could always ask Sophie out,” he told her.

Yaz about choked on her coffee, the mental image of her dating the curvy redhead in their precinct making heat rise to her face. “Excuse me?”

“Oh come on. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” he told her with a grin.

“I… have no idea what you’re talking about,” Yaz squeaked, focusing very carefully on her driving.

“Well, she was asking about you the other day.” Eddie casually sipped his coffee, watching for Yaz’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Yaz checked her mirrors as casually as she could. “And what was she asking?”

“Oh, you know. If you were single. If you were interested. In her,” he grinned again, and Yaz continued to keep her attention resolutely on the road in front of her.

It wasn’t that Yaz hadn’t noticed. Or hadn’t been interested, really. But after the Izzy incident, as she referred to it in her head, she had been very careful about who she let on that she was interested in. After all, she hadn’t even registered her own interest in girls before being harassed about it. She was careful, when she developed a crush on someone, to weigh whether her interest in that person outweighed her fear of coming out and possibly having to face that kind of humiliation again. Every time so far, she’d decided against dating. “And what did you tell her?” Yaz asked as casually as she could manage.

“I told her you were a mystery she was going to have to solve.” Eddie teased her, and Yaz groaned. “Seriously, though, you’re kind of hard to figure out. I mean, you turned me down, so clearly you don’t have the best taste,” he teased her further.

“Ha, ha.” Yaz stuck her tongue out at him, unoffended, realizing that was the least mature way she could possibly handle the situation.

Eddie let them ride in silence for a few minutes. “I’ve seen you look at her, though. And I can tell you right now that she’d say yes if you asked her out.”

Yaz sighed, not seeing any point in continuing to deny it when he so clearly had her number. “I’m not worried about being turned down, I’m worried about everyone else. People can be so…” she trailed off. “Intimidating,” she finished after a minute.

“Are you seriously telling me that not two hours ago, you had no problem getting up in the face of a guy a whole foot taller than you, but you can’t ask a girl out?” Eddie laughed.

“That is not at all the same thing,” Yaz protested. “It’s complicated.”

“I ask girls out all the time, it’s really not that complicated.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to come out to do it,” Yaz told him dryly. “You don’t have to risk people looking at you differently, people being… scared of you, really, when they find out. It’s just not something I really want to deal with. And I dunno, I’ve just always been better at standing up for other people than I have been at standing up for myself.” She shrugged. 

Eddie finished his coffee in silence, waiting until Yaz had parked the squad car outside the police station to wrap up their conversation. “I still think you should give Sophie a chance,” he said as he unbuckled. “It’s probably not my place to say, but you shouldn’t have to hide just because you’re afraid of what a couple of idiots might say.”

Yaz frowned. “I wish it was that easy.”

“Yeah, well, it might be, if you gave it a shot.” He opened the door and stepped out. “Sophie will be waiting, I’m sure.” Eddie winked at her.

Yaz felt a bubble of panic in her stomach. “You’re not going to tell her, are you? About this?”

“Nope. Ball’s in your court. Your choice.” He bent over so he was looking back into the car as he gathered his things. “For what it’s worth, though, Yaz, nobody here at the station is going to care. All you have to lose at this point are some dates.” He stood up and slapped the top of the car. “See you tomorrow.”

Yaz gathered her things and stepped out into the night, too, mind racing. She should be excited, but overwhelmingly she just felt terrified. Maybe one day, she thought, she’d stop caring what other people thought, or feel sick at the thought of going on a date with a woman. Today was probably not that day, she thought, but she was going to have to get over it sometime.

Well, she decided, there’s always tomorrow.

 

* * *

Yasmin Khan was twenty years old today and she had never had so much cake in her life. Her coworkers at the police station had brought cupcakes, adorable little white ones with red and blue dollups of icing on top to look like police lights, and without thinking she’d inhaled three of them. Then her nani had come over to celebrate with her family and had brought an extremely rich homemade chocolate cake with ganache icing, and as grandmothers do, her nani had insisted she eat a large helping. And when Yaz had finally managed to excuse herself, late at night, to sneak down to the TARDIS as she’d promised she would, Graham and Ryan had brought a small storebought cake to celebrate with too.

“I seriously don’t know if I can eat any more cake, but thank you guys so much!” she laughed, hugging each of the guys in turn and glancing up at the canopy of balloons covering the ceiling of the TARDIS. “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“So you like it, then?” the Doctor asked with an earnest smile.

“I love it! How long did it take you to do all this?” Yaz grinned.

“Too long,” Graham grumbled, but there was no venom behind it. “The Doc’s been blowing up balloons all day.”

“I have not, I blew up at least half of them on Chinnichi. Natural source of endo-helium,” the Doctor retorted. 

“What’s endo-helium?” Ryan asked.

The Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree. “Watch!” She hit a switch on the console that dimmed the lights in the TARDIS nearly to off, and raised her sonic to the balloons. Within seconds, they were spinning and dancing, glowing like neon lights, creating fractals and spirals and patterns above their heads.

Yaz could only stare with her mouth open. “That’s incredible.”

“It reacts to a sonic frequency that makes them do that. Neat, huh?” The Doctor grinned, letting them watch the balloons for a minute before clapping her hands and bounding to the console to turn the lights back on. “Well, let’s have some cake!”

The three of them followed her into the TARDIS kitchen, where the Doctor turned to get plates, and Graham placed some number shaped candles in the cake and pulled out a lighter.

“What are you-?!” the Doctor yelped, seeing the flame out of the corner of her eye, before noticing the candles. “Oh, I forgot. You like to extinguish your birthday cakes before eating them.” 

Ryan fought a smile. “Yeah, food is best freshly extinguished.”

The Doctor squinted at him, like she couldn’t figure out if he was joking or not. Upon deciding that he was, she grinned too. “Alright, well, light it on fire so we can put it out and eat.”

Graham finished lighting the candles and started the Happy Birthday song, while Yaz sat awkwardly in front of the cake. It was really only him and Ryan singing, because the Doctor was still watching them with all the interest of an anthropologist visiting a foreign tribe. Yaz made her third wish of the day and blew out the candles, then served up the cake. 

“So what did you do for your birthday?” Graham asked while they ate.

Yaz shrugged. “I worked, and they brought me these super cute police cupcakes. Ooh, and I got to arrest someone today! Got to chase him down and everything.” She grinned and stuffed more cake in her mouth. “And then I went home, Dad got me this bracelet for my birthday.” Yaz showed them the sparkling chain around her wrist. “And then I came here. It’s weird how when you’re a kid, birthdays are this huge deal, and then you get older and you still have to go to work and stuff.” 

“Yeah. Welcome to adulthood! Life is boring now.” Ryan licked icing off his finger.

“Adulthood isn’t boring!” the Doctor looked scandalized.

“Well, not for us, but it would be pretty boring if we weren’t time travelling on the weekends,” Ryan replied. 

“Then you’re not looking in the right place.” The Doctor waved her fork at him. “You don’t have to look in outer space for adventure. I mean, you’ll definitely find it in space, but you can find it on Earth too.”

Ryan stuffed half a slice of cake in his mouth and nodded, humoring her.

“I really don’t think I can eat any more cake. I’m going to go into a sugar coma in a minute,” Yaz sighed and put down her fork. Ryan immediately claimed her leftovers, stuffing his face as the Doctor and Graham bickered about whether the cake or the icing had more sugar content.

Once the leftover cake had been safely stowed away, Graham and Ryan said their goodnights, pleading having had a long day and not wanting to go on a trip right that very minute. “Yaz?” the Doctor asked hopefully. “Special birthday trip! One time offer?”

Yaz smiled. “Sure.”

“Ooooh, special birthday trip,” Ryan teased her under his breath as he followed Graham to the door.

“Shut up, Ryan,” Yaz scolded him good-naturedly, poking him in the ribs. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively and shut the door to the TARDIS behind him.

Yaz rolled her eyes, even though he couldn’t see her anymore. He had figured it out relatively quickly, once she and the Doctor had decided that they were, in fact, seeing each other. Which meant that he was one of exactly two people now who knew. Yaz turned to the console. “So, where to?”

“Your choice! It’s your birthday, after all, not mine.”

Yaz thought for a minute, gauging exactly how much adventure she was up for after a long day at work, and a few hours of celebration with her family. “It has been a bit of a long day, so I don’t want to go running through swamps or getting held hostage or anything,” she said. “But… let’s go see something amazing.”

The Doctor pondered for a minute. “Something amazing, no running required. Ooh, I know!” She dialed in a few settings. “We won’t even have to leave the TARDIS, but you’ll love it.”

Yaz smiled as the Doctor pushed the lever in place and the TARDIS lurched off into space, stilling in moments as they reached their destination. “So, where are we?” Yaz asked as the Doctor engaged the parking brake and all but skipped to the doors, flinging them open to reveal a multicolored galaxy, a few brighter points of light twinkling merrily away as they danced around an eddying, swirling center.

“This,” the Doctor told her with a grin, spinning to face her like an excited teacher, “is the Castor System. Six stars, orbiting around a dark matter nebula. That one, the small star furthest from us, has three planets orbiting it, and one of them is inhabited entirely by guinea pigs.”

“You’re joking,” Yaz said when she finally found her voice, staring at the formations in front of her.

“I never joke about guinea pigs, Yaz.”

Yaz stepped closer to the doorway of the TARDIS, watching the system slowly twirl in front of her. Some of the stars were moving fast enough to see from their vantage point, while others seem to lounge carelessly in place. After a moment of stunned silence, she felt the Doctor drape her silver coat over her shoulders, and Yaz suddenly realized it was a bit chilly with the doors open. “Thanks,” she said, putting the coat on properly and wrapping it around her.

“Do you like it?” the Doctor asked, glancing back out at the solar system in front of them.

“Absolutely. It’s incredible! How does dark matter form a nebula like that anyway?” Yaz sat down in the opening, dangling her feet outside the doors.

“Bit like regular matter,” the Doctor said, sitting next to her. “Dark matter’s not so scary as they make it sound. It’s antimatter you’ve got to watch out for. Ooh, I forgot, you can’t see antimatter! Look at this.” She wrapped an arm around Yaz for one very confusing minute, until Yaz realized she was pulling a pair of glasses out of the opposite pocket of her coat that Yaz was wearing. “Put these on and tell me what you see.”

She took them, noticing the purplish tint to the lenses, and put them on. The universe in front of her changed, shimmering swirls of ominous looking purple mingling in the orbits of the stars, causing one of them to dance and wobble as it avoided the antimatter. She raised the glasses up, taking in the sight without the help of the glasses, noticing the wobble of the one star, and then let the glasses drop back into place to see it again. “This is insane,” she breathed, glancing over at the Doctor and noticing that she looked almost shimmery through the tint of the antimatter glasses. 

“Neat, huh?”

“That doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Yaz laughed. “Doesn’t seeing all of this make you feel so insignificant, though?”

“Not at all. Actually, the opposite,” the Doctor responded, looking out over the universe. “Solar systems and nebulas are breathtaking, and the scale is enormous of course. This whole system is about a light-year across. But consider how small humans are, in relation to that, and yet the things you’ve accomplished. Taking the materials of the earth and creating art and technology, your insatiable curiosity to learn more, sending robots and people to other planets and galaxies and making art and technology there. Taking time and dividing it up into weeks and birthdays and Christmases. You’re such a small species, but you make a big splash in the universe.” She nudged Yaz with her elbow and grinned. “Anything but insignificant.”

Yaz smiled, taking it all in as she pulled the Doctor’s coat around her even further, and then smiling again when the Doctor moved closer and wrapped her arms around her, as though trying to keep her warm.

“Still.” Yaz leaned in, enjoying the shared warmth. “If you’d have told me five years ago I’d be sitting here looking at this… I’d have said you were nuts.”

The Doctor laughed. “So it’s been a good birthday, then,” she assumed.

“Best one so far,” Yaz confirmed. She paused. “Actually, I sort of told my mum. About us.”

“Sort of?”

“Okay, yeah, I did.”

“Yeah? What did she say?”

“I knew it.” Yaz laughed. 

The Doctor laughed too. “Mums always do, you know.” She grinned. “Hold on, if she knows now… why did you make such an effort to sneak down to the TARDIS?”

Yaz shrugged, but she was grinning. “Force of habit, I guess. Which is stupid, because half the reason I told her was because I was tired of sneaking.”

The Doctor hummed in agreement and pulled her a bit closer, and they sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.

“You know what, though?” Yaz said after a moment. “It felt really good to talk to her about it. I thought it was going to be terrifying, but it wasn’t.” She thought for a moment. “I guess standing up for myself isn’t nearly as hard as I’ve made it out to be in my head,” she laughed. 

“Mmm. The hardest part is always getting started,” the Doctor said. “Inertia doesn’t just apply to matter.”

Yaz laughed. “Nerd.”

“That’s science geek, to you.” She grinned. “Are you cold?”

“Freezing, yeah.” Yaz laughed. 

The Doctor jumped up, helped Yaz to her feet and shut the doors. “Let’s go find something warmer to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hit a bit of writers block towards the end but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Imma post it anyway. You can come procrastinate writing with me on tumblr if you like, @american-auror-story.


End file.
